The Students’ Association conducted elections this week, resulting in the election of new Senators-at-large, Class of 2010 Senators and members of the 2010 Class Council. All results available now are preliminary and will not be official until ITS certifies the results this weekend.
According to the unofficial results, Eric Sansky, Alvin Lomibao, Jackie Borchardt, Brian Clancy, Timur Niroomand and Lauren Sussman were chosen to be Senators-at-large. Patrick Chase, Kirstin Barry and Jonathon Junig were selected as Senators representing the Class of 2010, and Nikki Socash, Katie Wang, Eric Weissmann, Min Hur, Sarah Hyser, Han Choi, Brittnee Sellers and Katie Litts were picked to serve on the Freshman Class Council.
“I’m very happy with the number of candidates that ran and I’m very happy with how clean the campaign seemed to be,” assistant director of Wilson Commons student activities Laura Ballou said. “I’m just really excited to meet all the new freshmen that have gotten involved.”
The current election results do not include write-in ballots, which have the potential to change some outcomes. “The only place where the write-in votes would really make a difference is in the at-large elections, because the race was so close,” elections chair and sophomore Jon Herzog said. “The write-in votes could be very important to the official results, but usually they don’t make that much of a difference.”
The elections ran from 10 a.m. Mon. to 10 p.m. Wed. night, with the polls closing at 10 p.m. Between the three elections, a total of 5,389 votes were cast.
“Turnout for the elections was good,” Herzog said. “As always with any election though, turnout can always be better.”
This year, the rules for the races were slightly different than in past years, with the major change being an end to regulation of Facebook advertisements.
“One of the decisions that we made was that we are not going to monitor Facebook for elections,” Herzog said. “Some of the candidates did have groups for the election.”
Also, candidates for Senate were allowed to keep banners up in Wilson Commons in the elections period, another first.
The high voter turnout was due in part to a voting station set up in Wilson Commons for students to use.
“There were quite a few people who stopped by the table in Wilson Commons to vote,” Herzog said. “It did help with voter turnout.”
Election officials noted that the campaigns run were particularly clean this semester, helped in part by the seriousness of the candidates.
“One thing that showed me that people were serious about the elections was that out of 15 candidates, 13 submitted platforms, which is a very high percentage,” Ballou said. “People were really taking the campaign seriously.”
The elected candidates will begin their terms as soon as the election results are certified, which could come as early as Monday.
“Hopefully, everyone who ran will be able to work in student government in some capacity,” Herzog said. “We look forward to working with everybody.”
As the new representatives begin their terms, SA officials look forward to working with them.
“I’m very excited to meet them,” Ballou said. “It will be good to help them get oriented to their leadership role here at UR.”Majarian can be reached at mmajarian@campustimes.org.
